A recent internet glimpse of some of the most expensive celebrity homes probably had many looking longingly at those palatial mansions. Imagine living in one of those: can we actually find our way around without a guide or a map or GPS?

Does one sleep in a different room each night because one can’t find the room from where one started out in the morning? Would one ever need to get out of that large a home to thump along a jogging track for the daily 10,000 steps? Wouldn’t one achieve more than that quota merely by getting lost a couple of times?

Sometimes, as you probably know, houses are special, and they talk to those who are listening.

When we were young, we lived in old district bungalows. There were dozens of rooms that should have been scary because of all the corners and niches, but somehow they entranced us and made us feel part of a great adventure. Despite the number of rooms, each child did not get to have their own private space. All three of us shared a room until our brother got the privilege of being on his own because he became a schoolboy and had to ‘study’.

We girls could thereafter arrange our dolls and our dolls’ houses anywhere without fear of someone sitting on them or dropping them accidentally while charging around.

When we grew older, those were the houses in which we could play ‘dark room’, a game I’ve never heard friends who grew up in posh city flats talk about.

I think it was invented by our kind of houses — where in one bed-dressing-bathroom suite, there were unexpected shelves, window seats, bars to climb up and cling to, room dividers on which to balance, and numerous lofts to hide in and view the goings-on once our eyes were accustomed to the blackness of the night.

Games

Naturally, we played these games with friends who came to spend weekends or nights with us and, of course, we had the advantage. What was the fun if we didn’t? We knew exactly how much we had to stretch our legs to hop from the top of one cupboard to the other; we knew where the handholds and footholds were; we never got caught — and when someone called, “Give up! Put on the lights!” we scrambled down from our hiding places and pretended that we had been at arm’s length behind the curtain all along.

When we weren’t in the mood for strenuous activity, and opted to listen to stories instead, those houses made whatever we heard memorable. We could see Heathcliff rushing out in despair through our doors, trudging past the overgrown garden and into the wilderness beyond — yes, there was usually a forbidden wilderness somewhere close to the end of our compound wall, and that was added fuel for our imaginations. Then, sadly, we were transferred to a big city — and we learnt to live in sleek apartments where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

It seemed like a return to my childhood when, after marriage, I got to live in old cantonment bungalows once more. The excitement of houses that could be explored with our toddler ended, however, when we found snakes in the cooler and scorpions falling down from the false ceiling – and we had to go over every corner with a magnifying glass to make sure it was safe.

These houses weren’t talking to me as an adult — instead they seemed to be screaming ‘Danger’ and ‘Too much maintenance required’. Could it be, then, that it was only the tunnel of time that made what those old houses ‘said’ music to our ears and hearts?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.